Frequent travellers encounter health problems

A new study has discovered that jet-setting business people who spend a significant amount of their life travelling are more prone to health problems and obesity.

Researchers at the Columbia University have looked into the effects of excessive travelling and the results have been published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Looking onto the travelling habits of corporate employees their main discovery was that people who travel more than 20 days a month for business purposes had worse health than people who travelled less.

Weight concerns also spun out of the study. People deemed as ‘heavy travellers’ were found to have a mean body mass index of 2.75 compared to 26.1 for people who travelled much less.

The research was carried out by Andrew Rundle and Catherine Richards of Columbia University’s School f Public Health department. Rundle was inspired to initiate the study after having to travel a lot for work himself, and thus he was intrigued to learn of the effects it was having on his health.

“As travel goes up, how you feel about your own health goes down. The people who travel the most, tend to have the worst health,” Rundle said.